I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Jenny’s pros and cons of vA detox
Quote from Jessica2 on December 30, 2022, 6:58 pm@anna-3 kinda tough to call that one in this case in my opinion. Someone who is super sensitive to VA and who says he is eating VA with choline is a confounding factor.
Edit: I’ve reposted this as I made mistakes with the dates in the original post apologies for the confusion
@jessica2 You’ve missed my whole point if you’re saying it’s because I’m sensitive to VA. My point was I’ve been able to have ghee and yogurt fine without the PC but if I have them with the PC then I react badly like gallbladder/liver pain, pale stools, itchy skin. Which is why I came to the conclusion it’s storing more VA in the liver. Also when I eat any carotenoid foods or VA foods then the thought of having the phosphatidylcholine disgusts me afterwards which is another reason why I think it stores more VA and haven’t felt good when I’ve had it with carotenoids either.
I’ll share one story also which is another reason why I think it stores more VA and doesn’t detox it faster. From august 2021 - March 2022 I ate 3-4 eggs everyday, as I was suggested to take an egg white protein supplement because my amino acid test showed I had low amino acids. I couldn’t tolerate the supplement so I just ate eggs instead which I could tolerate fine. I wasn’t having dairy in this period, I would have either lettuce, celery or a carrot with some of my meals. I never overdid VA. I’ve never eaten liver before.
From December 2021-March 2022+ 2 extra months in 2021. Itook a phospholipid complex everyday, I also took 1 drop of DHA which was a tiny dose of around 10mg. End of March i started getting right side pain and heart palpitations from the DHA and phospholipid supplement so I stopped them both, I also saw hardly any benefits from the phospholipid supplement. I had been dealing with a stomach ulcer on and off for a year but as time went on it became much less of an issue and rarely flared up, in March I took this antimicrobial supplement which caused really bad detox symptoms and dark yellow/green mucus to come out in stools (looked like some really bad pathogen) so this caused my stomach ulcer to flare badly. I then caught a bad virus/bug (maybe it was COVID) from my brother. I then tried out astaxnthin 4mg for two days(had never taken before this),and after that period I started getting these mini cardiovascular attacks where I would have chest pain, fast heart rate, heart palpitations, breathlessness. Because these attacks were happening I tried some blood thinners like ginkgo biloba, Pycnogenol, and then also on the same day Citrulline (vasodilator) which was a really dumb idea to mix with vasoconstrictors. When I took zinc and glutathione with my lunch both of those really didn’t make me feel good. I had a few bites of my burger and the cardiovascular symptoms start again, I thought let me do some skipping I do one jump and have a sudden sharp pain in my upper right quadrant. This time the cardiovascular symptoms got extreme and felt life threatening, and I had severe chills, fastest heart rate I’ve ever felt felt like heart was beating out of chest 2-4x faster than I’ve ever felt before, unable to speak, losing consciousness, so I got my brother to call an ambulance because it seemed like a heart attack or something. I did have some grounding/earthing sheets so in a last ditch attempt I got my brother to wrap this around my upper half. Well this surprisingly saved my life and didn’t feel like I was about to die anymore and recovered substantially.
I found this study afterwards too:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22757749/
“Conclusions: Grounding increases the surface charge on RBCs and thereby reduces blood viscosity and clumping. Grounding appears to be one of the simplest and yet most profound interventions for helping reduce cardiovascular risk and cardiovascular events.”
When the paramedics finally arrived I had recovered substantially , but I was unable to explain to them what happened as my body was still in shock from the event. I go to the hospital tests come back fine and I get discharged eventually.
I get back home and eat 1 bite of bread and a spoon of cereal and I get very similar symptoms again like super fast heart, severe chills, these wave like contractions and severe pain in my stomach that felt like my stomach was about to rupture, strong feeling like I’m gonna die again, all I could do was lie on my back doing deep breathing hoping I would survive till next day. I’ve had severe bad infections before but this felt nothing like that but this felt a lot more serious and worse than anything I’ve experienced in my life before.
So my thoughts were is my stomach ulcer bleeding, or has my stomach perforated somehow.
The next day I had one tiny bite of a banana and same symptoms happened so I was unable to eat anything without it feeling life threatening. And I also couldn’t walk around the house without it feeling life threatening so for two days I just had to lay on my back drinking water with electrolytes. I was unable to lie on my sides or fronts without coughing up blood, I also saw blood in stools and urine in the April period so something was going badly wrong.
I got my GP to prescribe me famotidine which blocks stomach acid, and also drunk cabbage juice which is supposed to be good for ulcers, both helped alot and I was able to eat again somewhat without feeling like I was gonna die. But the only foods I could eat were white rice and eggs, anything else and my stomach started to feel really bad again. So some days I was having 7-8 eggs completely organic. Eventually I added in some fruit and veg. I then got the peptide BPC157 which has been show to rapidly heal gastric ulcers and gallbladder issues in studies and this helped me heal . I also found this grass fed yogurt extremely healing for my stomach, I’m not sure what part of the yogurt was it that helped me so much was it the calcium, VA ,or probiotics and fatty acids it contained. Or was it just shutting off bile flow and making me feel better short term.
After a month of hell my stomach finally started to feel better especially from the yogurt and I could tolerate most foods again. One day I had a digestive enzyme supplement with my meal with eggs. This is when my gallbladder finally gave up, and my stomach was severely inflamed again but now every time I had fat containing foods I would get pain and contractions specifically in gallbladder region. After this I couldn’t tolerate eggs anymore they were the worst by far, same with things like white rice and oats also really bad, I had clay coloured stools, chills and fever like symptoms , super high blood pressure then super low blood pressure, super high pulse and super low pulse, right side gallbladder pain.
From this day onwards my gallbladder was never the same and I couldn’t tolerate many foods and fat containing foods, surely all the eggs I was eating would have prevented all of this but no they didn’t.
So I was down to yogurt and apples but then I found out about beans, TUDCA etc and started improving. However my gallbladder has never been the same since this incident I always dealt with pain everyday. I tried a new phospholipid supplement that had PC in May as it’s supposed to help with gallbladder issues but it caused terrible right side pain.
In may 2022 I got an ultrasound and showed a 1cm gallstone, I also had an ultrasound in November 2021 for this right side pain I was having (thought was my kidneys at that time) which showed a 0.5cm gallstone so the gallstone had doubled in size in 6 months which is extremely fast.
In July 2022 I found out about Dr Wilson’s diet and ate the veg I was able to tolerate which were carrots butternut squash , Rutagaba, and celery. This is where I completely overdid VA and was eating 7-9 carrots a day with butternut squash on some days. I felt amazing and true healing for once but after 3 weeks on the diet, I took TUDCA and nattokinase with my high beta carotene meal one day and my stomach was severely inflamed again and I felt seriously bad, I couldn’t tolerate fructose or sugar anymore without extreme diabetes symptoms and certain carotenoid foods were giving me neuropathy from eating so much beta carotene in 3 weeks. I also had orange and yellow skin, and itchy skin.
I also added in an organic sourdough bread on the last week of this diet which I think messed up my metabolism for VA with glyphosate.
After learning about VA toxicity I now see what happened at the start as bile dumps which inflaming my stomach and causing the cardiovascular events that happened. I think the stomach ulcers were just caused by bile leaking into the stomach, as Antimicrobials and antifungals never helped it. When I went low VA the right side and gallbladder pain I had been having from May-august went away, however I developed other bad symptoms. So it’s no doubt in my mind VA toxicity was causing issues with my bile and gallbladder.
If eggs and phosphatidylcholine do detox VA faster and don’t store more VA then why did I have this major health crisis in April which seems to be related to VA, why did my gallstone double in size in less than 6 months. Why did my gallbladder stop working in May? Why didn’t the eggs and the phospholipid supplement that had choline prevent all of this. It seems like they were just slowing down my bile and storing more VA in this period hence why my gallbladder eventually gave up and gallstone grew in size so quickly.
So these are these reasons I think it stores vitamin A and doesn’t detox VA faster.
@andrew-b So please stop acting like choline is the magic cure all to everyones VA toxicity issues and that nothing can be bad about it for VA toxicity just because you have had a good experience with eggs yourself.
I do think choline is important to get in diet and has benefits, I’ve never stopped using the phosphatidylcholine supplement since I started using it last month as there are other benefits it has, but I don’t take it everyday and only take in small amounts every few days when my body is asking for it, and completely avoid taking it away from any VA foods as that is where it causes issues.
"My point was I’ve been able to have ghee and yogurt fine without the PC but if I have them with the PC then I react badly like gallbladder/liver pain, pale stools, itchy skin."
I am thinking these are symptoms of the liver getting rid of vitamin A?
Because those are very common detox symptoms...
If it would just be stored in the liver, you would not have any symptoms, no?
I am trying to think how all your issues started, was it from the DHA and phospholipid supplement ?
I am thinking supplements can really mess one up....
@inger No pale stools itchy skin and liver pain are not detox symptoms, they are a sign of a struggling liver, it’s from increased absorption not increased detox. When I’m detoxing VA I have clear signs and it’s yellow stools when I’m taking binders with a low VA diet and no liver or gallbladder pain, or itchy skin.
Pale stools is an indicator bile flow has been shut off so that means VA isn’t getting out, yes itchy skin can mean it’s leaking into the blood.
The pale stools, itchy skin and gallbladder pain were symptoms I also had if I tried eating more high VA foods once I reached full capacity for VA in July after eating lots of carrots everyday for a few weeks . I also had yellow and orange skin back then.
Someone told me Ray peat was very against choline and said it was very estrogenic, if that’s the case then that would be bad for bile production and flow.
Yeah my issues didn’t all start from the tiny dose of DHA (10mg) and the phospholipid supplement, the point I was making, was the daily eggs I was having for 9 months and the phospholipid supplement I also had, did not prevent me from getting VA toxicity or gallbladder disease and seemed to be building VA up in my liver.
@alexm I entirely agree with what you say about pale stools and itchy skin indicating poor bile flow.
Just thought I’d update on my recent experiences with phosphatidylcholine. I added a supplement for 5 days. This seemed to open a tidal wave of bile flow in me. This is good, however, this was too much for me! I’m very prone to bile reflux (backflow into stomach) and I experienced nausea and other nasty symptoms. The only other time I’ve felt this bad on the detox was when I incorporated Karen Hurd’s bean protocol which is also supposed to increase bile flow. I’d say both PC and beans increase bile flow and can lead to backflow symptoms if done too quickly.
This experience indicates to me that lack of PC was probably my limiting factor for liver detox phase 2.5. However, this does not mean that this is true for everyone. I’m fascinated by different responses. Understanding them can tell us a lot.
Edit: A nice video detailing phase 2.5 and 3 liver detoxification. At 5 mins in she details how important PC is to bile flow. However, this is not the only limiting factor. https://youtu.be/TduQwVDQyFQ
16 mins in talks about PEMT genetics and how one needs to eat plenty of eggs if these are your genetics or you get ‘bile stasis’. (50% of some populations carry PEMT SNPs - I do).
She emphasised the importance of reducing inflammation BEFORE doing a detox because inflammation blocks phase 2.5 (toxins into bile). I think that this is sensible advice as this could be a limiting factor for many. The presentation is 23 mins long. After that it’s questions.
@jenny,
when you did the bean protocol, did you follow it precisely, like did you cut out all stimulant too like coffee and tea, did the palm full of animal protein with each meal.. etc. and how long did you try each time, about, before you run into troubles and what was they?
Sorry for the many questions...
I am just trying to learn from you so I dont do any stupid mistakes 🙂
@jaj I tend to be a delver and I know I'm probably getting annoying with my posts and threads about dye and latex allergy BUT
I do want to mention that sometimes cross reactivity happens with a vast array of foods. Also, these allergies (PPD, dyes/latex) can be so severe that they can send people to the hospital. Some need an epi-pen with them at all times. I've read that 10% of people might be affected, and certain jobs are more prevalent (for instance health care worker or hair dresser)
I feel that this is a more important topic than we realize (esp for those with mysterious skin issues).
anywho, on this page is a list of foods that can cross react: https://allergyasthmanetwork.org/allergies/latex-allergy/latex-allergy-foods/
The nature of this allergy (dyes/ppd/latex) is that it usually hums along in the background just making you borderline miserable until for some reason (often a big exposure) it escalates.
Quote from Jenny on February 16, 2023, 4:15 am@alexm I entirely agree with what you say about pale stools and itchy skin indicating poor bile flow.
Just thought I’d update on my recent experiences with phosphatidylcholine. I added a supplement for 5 days. This seemed to open a tidal wave of bile flow in me. This is good, however, this was too much for me! I’m very prone to bile reflux (backflow into stomach) and I experienced nausea and other nasty symptoms. The only other time I’ve felt this bad on the detox was when I incorporated Karen Hurd’s bean protocol which is also supposed to increase bile flow. I’d say both PC and beans increase bile flow and can lead to backflow symptoms if done too quickly.
This experience indicates to me that lack of PC was probably my limiting factor for liver detox phase 2.5. However, this does not mean that this is true for everyone. I’m fascinated by different responses. Understanding them can tell us a lot.
Edit: A nice video detailing phase 2.5 and 3 liver detoxification. At 5 mins in she details how important PC is to bile flow. However, this is not the only limiting factor. https://youtu.be/TduQwVDQyFQ
16 mins in talks about PEMT genetics and how one needs to eat plenty of eggs if these are your genetics or you get ‘bile stasis’. (50% of some populations carry PEMT SNPs - I do).
She emphasised the importance of reducing inflammation BEFORE doing a detox because inflammation blocks phase 2.5 (toxins into bile). I think that this is sensible advice as this could be a limiting factor for many. The presentation is 23 mins long. After that it’s questions.
I watched the linked video and for the Stage 2.5 detox and searched for a general detox visual (posted below).
I noticed that Stage 2 included Vitamin C, which is interesting. Vitamin C increases bile production and is associated with liver and gut health. Vitamin C may attenuate scurvy in individuals with Vitamin A toxicity by competing with retinoic acid in circulation and in hepatic cells (they are antagonistic when it comes to receptors) and also by increased and proper bile elimination of Vitamin A.
It seems Choline and Vitamin C are underappreciated by a certain doctor when it comes to liver health and detox.
Uploaded files:
@alexm Oh wow, that’s horrifying. I’m glad you pulled through the heart attack and blood loss. Yikes. (Incredible the grounding helped—that’s fascinating.)
Have you ever tried going low-oxalate? Since dairy seemed to help ya, it comes to mind.
I hope your liver and gallbladder recovers, man.
@jaj Oh that doesn’t sound fun at all. 🙁 At least it seems to indicate you’re on the right track.
I’m also noticing strong similarities in my body’s response to choline (in my case, from egg consumption) and how it first reacted to apples and pectin, and also to the bean protocol...more bile flow, for sure! 😬 (A good thing, but uncomfortable when pushed, no doubt.)
I will watch the linked video, thank you. 🙂
@puddleduck sounds like a similar response to me. Go slow would be my advice. I’ve come up with three possible ideas as to why eggs/PC can make you feel worse, even though you really need them.
I believe that I have a severe phophatidylcholine deficiency which has led to poor cell membrane health. So what’s the answer? Ingest more eggs/PC supplement would seem to be the answer, indeed, my NT recommended x8 capsules. However, a few doses of x1 capsule made me feel truly terrible!! Why? This is the question I’ve been asking myself.
Possible ideas:
1. PC is essential for bile flow. It can be the limiting factor for phase 2.5. Adding PC can cause a bile tsunami. This was definitely the case for me. If there is leakiness in the system from bile reflux or leaky gut then this will mean more bile and toxicity gets into the blood. Toxicity in blood means symptoms.
2. PC can displace lipid soluble toxins from cell membranes. This leads to a temporary increase in circulating toxins.
3. Re-feeding effect. If cell membranes have been unhealthy then metabolism will not have been working optimally. As things improve then metabolism cranks up and requires MORE nutrients. This can lead to worsening nutrient deficiencies. I’ve been looking at potassium and B1 in particular. This is a new topic to me but one that makes a lot of sense.
Therefore I think the safest way to replenish choline is to eat the number of eggs that don’t give you any toxicity symptoms. For me this is 1.5. Also maybe use some binders. Eat a nutrient dense diet to ensure enough micronutrients are present if the body needs more. I’m using Cronometer to try and help me do this. Basically slow change is best. Adding in the PC supplement has been a learning experience!! Frustrating as I just want to replenish quickly.
Of course the best thing would have been to not get into this mess in the first place. Prevention would be much better and easier than cure.